Harry Furniss never deals as firmly with the grim realities of the
Hungry Forties as the original illustrators and Fred Barnard, but here he offers an
innovative "alternative" ending to Dickens's novella by implying that even the New Year's
dance is part of Trotty's dream.

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Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated

To the music of the band, and, the bells, the marrow-bones and cleavers,
all at once; and while the Chimes were yet in lusty operation out of doors; Trotty,
making Meg and Richard, second couple, led off Mrs. Chickenstalker down the dance, and
danced it in a step unknown before or since; founded on his own peculiar trot.

Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them,
but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be
so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities
from which these shadows come; and in your sphere none is too wide, and none too limited
for such an end endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a
happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be
happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their
rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy. ["Fourth Quarter," p.
157]

Commentary

Having had the opportunity to study
R. W. Buss's watercolour study (never
completed) of 1870-75 "Dickens's Dream," in which the author nods off at his desk at
Gadshill surrounded by the creations of his imagination, Furniss places Trotty in a
dreamer's pose. Instead of characters and situations he has seen in his dream vision,
however, Trotty here sees the various dancers : Richard and Meg (left), Jabez and street
musicians (above), Lilian, and even himself dancing with the neighbourhood groceress,
Mrs. Chickenstalker. Trotty's outstretched hand even suggests that, like Dickens with
Household Words and All the Year Round
Trotty is "conducting" the constituents of the dream from an easy chair.

Since Dickens indicates that Trotty has awkened from his nightmarish vision just in
time to celebrate the marriage of his daughter and Richard on New Year's Day, Furniss has
in essence re-written the story's conclusion to imply that even the New Year's dance is
but a delusion, and that such happy endings for the working class are unlikely. His
Trotty is a well-modelled, fully realised figure, with strict attention to every aspect
of his porter's uniform, and his benevolence shines through his drowsy visage, so that
Furniss's version of the humble messenger is far more satisfying than the cartoonish
efforts of the original illustrators, even though there is a gentle wistfulness about him
that contrasts sharply with Trotty's whole-hearted enjoyment of the community festival in
Leech's final illustration, "The New Year's Dance".

References

Dickens, Charles. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Som
Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. Il. John Leech, Richard Doyle,
Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844 [dated
1845].